Featured Charles H. Spurgeon And The Revised Version

What is the real differences though in the actual Greek texts, and not variants , between the CT/Bzt/Majority texts?

 

There was a very large Anglo-Catholic element in the Church of England, more than there is today, due to the 'Oxford Movement' and Cardinal Newman. There were certainly fewer liberals than today, but they did exist in fair numbers even back then. Google up Bishop Calenso. He was a South African bishop but he had many supporters in Britain. And there are still some very fine evangelicals in the C of E even today.

 

Was there an Anglo-Catholic element in the Church of England at the time of the making of the KJV?

What were the theological views of important KJV translator Lancelot Andrewes? Florence Higham observed that the faith of men such as Andrewes and Archbishop Bancroft was "Catholic in its respect for ancient custom, ordered worship, and episcopal rule" (Lancelot Andrewes, p. 34). John Chandos claimed that Bancroft’s opposition to the Papists was political rather than doctrinal” (In God’s Name, p. 114, footnote 1). Maurice Ashley noted that Andrewes "sought to reconcile Catholic ceremonies with Protestant beliefs" (England in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 41-42). C. P. Hill maintained that "Catholic tradition in the Church of England owes a great deal" to Andrewes (Who's Who in History, p. 31). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church noted that Andrewes was "one of the principal influences in the formation of a distinctive Anglican theology" which was "Catholic in tone" (p. 61). Horton Davies observed that Anglican spirituality had a "continuing link with Catholicism in Lancelot Andrewes and his successors" (Worship and Theology in England, p. 428). The Dictionary of Literary Biography affirmed that Andrewes was "the spiritual and intellectual leader" of the movement that has been called Anglo-Catholicism, high churchmanship, or English Arminianism (Vol. 172, pp. 4, 6).

Ian Green also referred to the "High Church or Anglo-Catholic persuasion" of men like Andrewes and Laud (History of Religion in Britain, p. 174). George Fisher wrote: “The ‘Anglo-Catholic theology’--the way of thinking represented by such men as Laud and Bishop Andrewes--with its doctrine of the necessity of episcopal ordination to the exercise of the ministry in any church, its feeling of the exalted importance of the sacraments among the means of grace, and with the ritualistic spirit with which it was imbued, had been growing up since the last days of Elizabeth’s reign” (History, p. 404). The reference work Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800 noted: "Around the time he took up his Pembroke mastership, Andrewes began to emerge as a leading and outspoken member of the Anglo-Catholic Arminian party" (Vol. 5, p. 17). Ashton referred to "the more liberal theology, associated in England with the name of Lancelot Andrewes and across the North Sea with that of Arminius" (James I, p. 173). McClintock wrote: "To express his theological tenets briefly he [Andrewes] was of the school which is generally called the school of Laud" (Cyclopaedia, I, p. 223). Trevor-Roper identified Andrewes as the "founding father of Laudianism" (Catholics, Anglicans, p. 243).

Brightman observed that "in broad outline the theology which he [Andrewes] preached" is "the Creed, professed by a Catholic Church, wherein the Holy Ghost, through a ministry of apostolic succession and divine right, regenerates men in baptism, confirms them by the imposition of hands, absolves them by a second imposition of hands, in the exercise of the keys, 'the Church's act,' by which 'God ordinarily proceedeth'" (Private Devotions, p. xlvii). Trevor-Roper asserted that "Andrewes pronounced the English Church to be apostolic, bishops to rule by divine right, and good works to be necessary to salvation" (Archbishop Laud, p. 31). Raymond Chapman observed that Andrewes “asserted the validity of Anglican orders as being in the apostolic succession, with power to celebrate the sacraments, and to absolve from repented sins” (Before the King’s Majesty, p. 11). Chapman claimed that while Andrewes “did not adhere to the Reformed doctrine of sola scriptura, Scripture alone, his sacramentalism did not make him undervalue the authority of the Bible” (Ibid.). McGrath maintained that Andrewes “declared that orthodox Christianity was based upon two testaments, three creeds, four gospels, and the first five centuries of Christian history” (Christian Theology, p. 8). Dorman cited Andrewes as explaining the Christian faith as “one Canon given of God, two testaments, three symbols, the first four councils, five centuries and the series of Fathers therein” (Lancelot Andrewes, p. 9). G. M. Story noted that some have claimed that Andrewes was "virtually a crypto-Catholic" (Andrewes, Sermons, p. xiii). Maurice Reedy claimed that "it was the essence of Anglicanism in his [Andrewes'] day that it chose to retain enough of full Roman Catholic doctrine to resemble the old Church" (Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, p. 216). Dorman suggested that in 1595 Andrewes “reinterpreted the Lambeth Articles in a more Catholic light” (Lancelot Andrewes, p. 5). Andrewes' works have been included in a series of books entitled the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology.

 

That's a great question!
It would certainly be my view that the Reformation in England was not as thorough-going as it should have been. The very first controversy within the C of E was over vestments, when John Hooper declined to be consecrated Bishop of Gloucester in episcopal robes, for which he was actually imprisoned for a short time.

However the XXXIX Articles is a generally Protestant document to which all the translators of the KJV would have had to be committed, and the English delegation to the Synod of Dort was commended for its Protestantism and Calvinism. But Bancroft, Andrewes and the others were all Episcopalians and believed to at least some extent in the 'Apostolic Succession.'

But that was a very different thing to the aggressive high churchmanship and extreme arminianism of Archbishop Laud 20 years later, and different again to the crypto-Romanism of the Oxford Movement of the 19th Century.

 

The Revised Version is what is being referred to not the RSV. The Revised Version came out in 1880 during Spurgeon's lifetime

 

Rippon's original title for this thread was "Charles H. Spurgeon And The Revised Standard."
Apparently someone has since edited the title, correcting his blunder.